Gál Hans: Das Lied der Nacht (2CD)

After 1933 nobody had the opportunity to hear this opera. Then the Osnabrück Music Theater rediscovered Das Lied der Nacht by Hans Gál and performed it in 2017. This late-romantic opera to a text by Karl Michael von Levetzow premiered in 1926, but since its composer was of Jewish origin, the Nazis prohibited stage productions of it. During his later years Hans Gál was doubly forgotten: as one of the many Jewish artists who were forced into exile by the Fascists and as a conservative "very-latest romanticist" pursuing paths laid out by Brahms and Richard Strauss. He himself described Das Lied der Nacht as a "dramatic ballad" symbolically representing the emotional world of a Sicilian hereditary princess destined for sovereignty. The text set in twelfth-century Palermo evokes a magical, romantic world in which Antiquity and Byzantine and Moorish elements combine to form a synthesis of rare fascination and a lyrical blend of European and Oriental culture. After the premiere at the end of May 2017, the NOZ wrote, "Fantastic music, a good libretto, a marvelous performance, an all-around successful rediscovery that the premiere audience in the Osnabrück Theater celebrated with abundant applause." Now on cpo and an absolute listening must!